Thursday, December 31, 2015

2015 in Review

I'm going to basically steal the format for this post from Age of Ravens, because it's been ages since I've blogged anything and, well, I'm out of practice.

2015 was certainly a jam-packed rollercoaster of a year, filled with new experiences and all kinds of terrible, terrible life choices. But hey, at least I didn't buy any 4e shit this year, so that's a fucking win right there.

I think my last post was in early november? I'm still sitting on 2 APs for IKRPG, and chances are I'll have yet another one to edit and post after tonight when I run my now-traditional kill me right goddamn now tabletop gaming marathon. Last year it was D&D 5th edition. This year I'll be running Bad Moon Rising in IKRPG, because a) my good friend Susan has been GMing this system for about 2 years now and has only played it...once? Twice?

also b) because IKRPG is all I apparently know how to buy anymore.

In any case, let's get onto the Year in Review.

New RPGs:

Um...Did I play anything new this year? Oh yeah!


  • Night Witches
  • Lasers and Feelings
  • Through the Breach: Malifaux RPG
  • Runequest


Well. That was a brief list. Seems like I pretty much stuck to my guns for most of the year, really barely getting into anything new until the latter portion of the year (stupid personal reasons). All of these new systems were quite entertaining and enjoyable, but I think the game that I look back most fondly on would have to be Through the Breach, seeing as it was the sophomore outing as GM for one of my other friends (and Susan's husband), and I'm always a fan of a RPG system where I don't have to roll dice.

What I Ran:

This year I believe I focused mostly on running my weekly game of IKRPG, with occasional weekend or one-shot forays into other gaming avenues. To be honest, I don't recall running a good amount of gaming this year, and that makes me unspeakably sad.


  • IKRPG: Completed a solid season of murder-hoboing in Western Immoren, and got started on the following one as well. Just good times all around.


  • Scrolls and Swords: I think I just got one session of this in this year, which makes me a little sad, because if I'm recalling correctly, I was down one of my core players that day. So yes. Sad. In better news, I'm hoping to rectify that sometime soon because every time I run Scrolls and Swords my listener base increases significantly!
  • Savage Worlds: I think I ran two games of this. Maybe three? It was a duet-style campaign set in Sword Art Online's super kawaii MMORPG animu universe, and apparently my GMing style is not very conducive to a single player. Perhaps I'd do better with some kind of prewritten game in with that small of a captive audience. Like, you know, the Great Pendragon Campaign.
  • Lasers and Feelings: In terms of awarding myself some kind of trophy for running a table with the most number of gamers at once, I'll have to hand it off to my recent unrecorded session of Lasers and Feelings, which I believe featured...seven players? Three of which were on Skype? Good times with it, though, I definitely feel like the Lasers and Feelings mechanics are more suited to the oddball style stories I end up creating for the 'everything and the kitchen sink' universe of Spacemyspacebook.
My 2016 Projections:

Well, to start things off, I'm going back to fucking GenCon, bay bee, because that shit is fun like no other! This year, I'm hoping to actually run some games (I'll probably focus on accessory-lite systems) so that players can look at me like I'm some kind of gamer who has his shit together and didn't only post like 24 blog entries in a single calendar year. Currently in my head to run at GenCon:

Savage Fallout: I'm somewhat on the fence regarding Savage Worlds. I've played in it, I've GMed a little bit of it, I'll need to GM more of it to get into any kind of shape to run the system for players who actually know its ins and outs. That said, with Fallout 4's release this November, the iron is already super hot and ready to strike, and honestly with my utter disappointment with the design direction of contemporary Fallouts I'm hoping I can inject some of the pure, exploratory-slash-madcap entertainment I remember experiencing playing the original CRPGs.

BRP Diablo: Yet another purist approach, because while Diablo III is an entertaining and addictive iteration of a beloved series and II is inarguably the best game of the franchise, there was really nothing like starting a new game of original Diablo, watching that intro cinematic, hearing about the butcher, descending into the Cathedral, and suddenly really needing to pee because holy shit that game creeped me out. Newer iterations have set even starting players up as unmitigated badasses, with very little acknowledgement for the underlying themes of the game series: mortality, terror and madness. I feel like a return to form would be the best way to communicate this with tabletop RPGs, and perhaps this year at GenCon I'll discover if I'm right.

???: I'm thinking I should run three games this year in Indianapolis. Originally I had thought to run IKRPG, but there is a lot to cart around with that system, from minis to tiles to maps. I'm leaning towards running something else BRP, but that may overload me on just one system, and I really feel like 2016 is the year for me to branch out. Well, if anything, I've got a shit ton of core books to pore through.

In Summation:

2015 I felt like I was in some kind of a holding pattern; perhaps 2016 will be the year I can break free from that line of thinking. In any case, if I just stick to my guns and keep not buying 4e stuff, I'll be doing pretty damned well.